Strengthening the United Nations Human Rights Mechanisms

Strengthening the United Nations Human Rights Mechanisms

We advocate with the United Nations human rights system to be a better mechanism for accountability, protection and promotion of children’s rights.

The UN Human Rights System can only be effective if it generates recommendations to the States that are relevant, targeted and that advance the implementation of the CRC and its Optional Protocols. This can only happen if children’s rights defenders, including children, are allowed to cooperate with the UN in a safe, meaningful, and transparent way, so as those recommendations respond to the real issues that children face.

The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child is the body in charge of interpreting the rights contained in the CRC and its Optional Protocols and by doing so, it generates the main international child-rights related standards. Child Rights Connect strives to ensure that those standards are the highest possible quality by facilitating inputs from children’s rights defenders, including children. To make this possible, Child Rights Connect supports the Committee, in close coordination with the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and UNICEF, with the development of child-sensitive procedures and transparent working methods.

We then advocate for the Committee’s standards and practices to be taken into account in the broader UN human rights system and by key UN agencies, so that they can get become even more powerful levers for children’s rights defenders.

We are active members of TB-Net, the NGO Group for the UN Treaty Bodies, in order to enhance the effectiveness of the UN Treaty Bodies system. We are the key partner of diplomats, OHCHR and UNICEF for the realization of the Annual Days on the Rights of the Child and the drafting of the related resolutions. We strategically use the Human Rights Council, the UPR and the Special Procedures to advance our key thematic areas.